Nadav stared at Elise in blank horror. He stared at her like a man broken: as if he wanted to strip away her charm and her beauty, layer by layer, so he might finally truly understand her, the way that he once believed he did.
“You lied to me. Every morning and every night, with every breath, with every moment of laughter. It was all a lie.”
“No!” Elise’s voice was ragged with desperation. “It wasn’t a lie! I love you, and I know that you love me!”
“How can I love you when you’re a complete stranger?” Nadav said heavily. “I invited you to share my life, and yet I feel like I’m meeting you for the first time.”
Elise’s eyes were wide and round with anguish. “Please. I’m asking for your forgiveness, and I’m asking for another chance.”
Livya turned around to smile at Calliope, an empty, bitter smile that failed to reach her eyes. Calliope swallowed. She and her mom were as still as actresses frozen onstage before the lights go out.
Elise held out her hands, palms up, in a wordless gesture of appeal. “I love you,” she whispered. “Please, I’ll tell you the truth—we can start over—only please don’t say good-bye, not like this, not after everything we’ve shared.”
Nadav was pointedly looking away. “We’re broken,” he said quietly. “My trust is broken. I have no desire to sit here picking up the fragments and try to put them together again when we both know that it will never be the way it was.”
Elise’s frame shook with silent sobs. She’d screwed her eyes shut, as if by closing her eyes she might make this whole thing go away. Calliope couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen her mom cry—really cry, not the fake tears she could summon on command.
“I’ll leave the apartment to let you pack. You have twenty-four hours,” Nadav announced. “Do not be here when I return. Either of you.”
“Nadav,” Elise pleaded, but his face seemed to have been carved from stone.
“You should be ashamed of yourself. Have you even stopped to think what kind of example you are setting for your daughter, marrying me for my money, lying about who you are?” He gave a defeated sigh. “Livya, let’s go.”
“With pleasure.” Her eyes glinted with malice.
For a moment Calliope thought Elise was going to throw her arms around Nadav, beg him to change his mind. Instead she twisted her wedding ring off her finger and held it out toward him.
The flash of pain in his eyes struck the breath from Calliope’s chest. “That was a gift. It’s yours,” he told her, and then his expression became hard and closed-off again, and he and Livya were gone.
Calliope felt the aftershocks of what had just happened racing through her body. She couldn’t really breathe. “Mom . . .” she tried, at a loss for words. “I’m so sorry.”
Elise reached up to wipe at her eyes, smearing makeup down her cheeks. “Oh, sweetie. This isn’t your fault.”
“It’s completely my fault! You told me not to go out with Brice, and I did it anyway. If I had just listened to you, none of this would have happened.”
“No, Nadav was right. I’m the adult, and I need to take responsibility for the life I’ve built for us. This day would have come sooner or later. I just always hoped it would be later.” Elise sighed. “It’s time for us to go, sweetie.”
They were leaving New York. And this time, Calliope knew, they wouldn’t be coming back.
RYLIN
RYLIN HADN’T PLANNED on falling back in love with Cord so quickly.
She’d wanted to be thoughtful and intentional about it, instead of tumbling into their relationship all over again. But then, she hadn’t exactly planned for it last time either. Maybe that was just the way love went—it was something that happened to you, and the best preparation you could hope for was the chance to take a deep breath before the wave of it crashed above you and you were in over your head.
“Thanks for coming with me tonight,” Cord said as they walked together through the inauguration ball.
Rylin felt herself color under his gaze and reached down reflexively to smooth the skirts of her gown. It had arrived this afternoon in an enormous purple Bergdorf’s box, complete with a satin bow.
“Absolutely not,” Rylin had protested when the delivery drone showed up. She wasn’t going to let Cord start sending her extravagant presents. But Chrissa had insisted that they at least open it, and once Rylin had seen the dress—an architectural cream-colored strapless one, with silver splattered over it, as if someone had spilled a vat of liquid stardust on its smooth silk surface—she couldn’t resist trying it on. It fit her exquisitely, the corseted torso giving way to a narrow floor-length skirt.
One dress can’t hurt, she had concluded. After the day she’d had, being questioned by the police about Mariel’s death, Rylin didn’t have the strength to resist something this beautiful. Not that she’d told the police anything; she had nothing to tell, really. But the experience had still unnerved her.
She knew she should reach out to the others, to Leda and Watt and Avery, to ask if they had been questioned too. She told herself she would do it later. Right now, in this moment, all she wanted was to stand here with Cord, feeling beautiful.